Reaching for Manhood

CAUGHT IN THAT MUSIC by Seymour Epstein. 307 pages. Viking. $5.95.

All too often, a novel of distinction gets lost in the munching, crunching echoes of promotion and ballyhoo. It would be a shame if such were to be the case with this book, which looks like the sleeper of the season.

The story is soberly but evocatively set in middle-class New York City in the late 1930s--when double-decker buses still charged up Fifth Avenue and Danish pastry was as big as fielders' gloves; when the words "new" and "guild" and "theater" and "group" and "league" were always appearing in histrionic combinations on the drama pages; when "reasonable" men were still hoping that Hitler and Mussolini would turn out to be reasonable too.

Be Wary. Caught up in the beat of his time is Jonas Gould, an athletic and good-looking young Bronxite, working as a printer's apprentice. Reaching for adulthood but not yet firmly grasping it. Jonas at 21 must confront the relevance of a world bound for war with his own personal fate. The burden of this novel is Jonas' growing realization that though he may not know quite what he wants for himself, he must be wary of all who seem to know exactly what they want from him.

His chess-playing father wants him to seek intellectual fulfillment. His sister wants him to endorse her choice of husband, a dull, minispirited C.P.A. His friend, a sick medical student, wants Jonas to make his decisions for him.

His girl friend, a married actress, wants him to accept both her artistic pretensions and Stalinist politics. Even his boss, a self-made bundle of problems, wants him to deter his daughter from the path of sexual deviation.

Kitchen Realism. Finally, Jonas decides that all of these relationships are a barrier "separating the two halves of his life." To become a whole man on his own terms he enlists in the army. The move may seem rather quaint to some readers today--but Jonas says that to end his adolescence, he must break with his narrow past and find the courage to fight for his own future.

Author Epstein, whose 1964 book Leah was a controlled whisper of a novel, is one of those rarities in American letters--the completely rounded writer, capable of handling the counterpoint that this theme necessitates. If his method is kitchen realism (down to the whirring refrigerator), his manner is as fine as the tinkle of dining room crystal. He does not try to bomb the reader out of his mind, nor is he out to revolutionize his conscience. Rather, he tells a story with grace and wit, taking the common--or universal--experiences of life as the basis for a work that readers not only can understand but can use to understand each other.

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